The Wolverine: Top Dog or Barking up the Wrong Tree?

The Wolverine: Top Dog or Barking up the Wrong Tree?

In Short:

Best Wolverine movie yet
Good action and strong cast
Does stretch on a bit at just over two hours
Brilliant mid-credits scene

All X-Men films, past and present, are going to compared to Bryan Singer's X2 and after Wolverine Origins, I was slightly skeptical going into The Wolverine as to whether or not Logan had the interest to carry a whole film without the help of the other X-Men. I am however pleased to say that he can

Fortunately, The Wolverine does not a continue Origins' mistakes but instead does it's best to make up for them. It had a lot to make up for but we finally we Wolverine's animal side, something missing from all X-Men movies thus far, helped largely by the change of setting.

The action throughout The Wolverine is great. It's enjoyable to watch and for the first time you can finally feel that the villains do go toe to toe with Wolverine, adding a sense of excitement the others never had.

It's sixth time round for Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and shows no signs of slowing down yet. Again Jackman plays Wolverine perfectly and in my opinion, the strongest part of the film. As for the rest of the cast the acting is solid. Rila Fukishima (Yukio) is brilliant in her role but gets little character development, one of the main flaws. Tao Okamoto (Mariko) acts well but as well as not getting enough development falls victim to coming across as the damsel in distress one too many time.

At 126 minutes the story suffers the same fate as The Dark Knight Rises. Due to the length the story seems stretched and a lot of scenes seem as if they're just passing time until Logan gets in another fight. For example, a large amount of the second act is just Wolverine moping around and reminiscing about Jean Greg and his time in WWII.

Sticking with the story and as the film goes on the script does become weak in spots and predictable near the end. The scenes between fights aren't the most exciting, a problem which could have been avoided by cutting out half the reminiscing scenes.

Verdict:

The Wolverine surpasses Wolverine Origins tenfold but doesn't quite match up to the fun of First Class or X2. Still a fun film that falls in around the first X-Men film and by no means bad. The mid-credits scene is well worth waiting for with an appearance from two familiar faces.

This is the first review I've wrote and if you think there is anything I can improve on, please let me now.